Special Report: Avoid Password Fatigue

Every day, you probably log into multiple websites to connect with friends, shop, and pay bills. Do you ever have trouble keeping up will all those user names and passwords?

Many of us turn to our computer, tablet or phone, for virtually everything, and every account requires a username and password.

"These days you have to have a password for everything, bank accounts, even at work," said Computer Nerd customer Lisa Patton.

Patton says keeping track of those passwords is exhausting. "It can get tedious, because then you have hundreds and hundreds of different accounts and passwords to try to remember and you don't want the same password to be linked to every account."

Timothy Conlon, lead technician at The Computer Nerd says having the same password leaves your accounts and information vulnerable to hackers. "There are a lot of bad schemes out there that basically open up the doors to try to steal your passwords," said Conlon.

And sites have ramped up their security by making you choose unique passwords. "They are adding things like having to use symbols and asterisks, use capital letters, numbers and everything. By having requirements like that, yes it does increase security, but at the same time having so many different passwords on every site, it makes them hard to remember."

To help Patton remember, she keeps her username and part of her password for each account in her phone.

"So instead of typing the entire password out, I will type one or two first couple of letters or numbers and then I might even in the notes section in my phone give myself a hint as to what that password could actually be."

Now there's even software, like Roboform, to remember the information for you. "You just have one master password and then it has the encrypted password to open up all the other ones with it," said Conlon.

But Patton says her system seems to be working. "If anyone ever stole my phone they would only have my IDs, but the passwords, it would take a while for them to figure it out."

A lot of the anti-virus programs also have password managers built in, and there are even password manager apps for your phone.